FreeGauge?

[Delta]

Hi guys, I'm completely new to this site and only signed up yesterday. I can see what you are doing here is of great importance and looks like fun to boot - I'm a great supporter of open source software and hardware. Since this is my first post I wasn't really sure if I should introduce myself somewhere first or just post away. So please point me to somewhere to post up my skills etc, if thats generally the done thing.

Anyways.

I'm a rather busy person, so things move rather slowly, but I've been designing a digital gauge for the last couple of days. I'm not sure if this really fits in with your idea of building a full dash unit, as mine would be individual gauges run on an I2C bus. The idea being that you have Tach and Speedo gauges which are fixed function, and then another 2 configurations or perhaps only one, that gets reused for all the other gauges. With a microswitch on the front you select which data is to be displayed, so with say 4-6 generic gauges + tach + speedo you have a full dash which can have its layout changed to suit the driver. So far I have based the logic of the gauge on the arduino (Atmega168) which has a nice (easy) programming interface, as it comes with a lot of libraries etc and has I2C built in. I've got a MAX2719 running 4 7 seg number displays and 16 leds. Everything is on the breadboard so its not laid out like a gauge yet. I've not finished up the spec or code for taking data via I2C to display, so for the moment it just reads the analog inputs for display data.

Like I said, its moved slowly, and not much is working yet. Just wondering more than anything if this kind of thing would be appreciated here, or if you guys will be looking more for an LCD based all in one dash like the MOTEC unit.

Justin

[Fred]

Gidday,

If you want to post a thread about yourself, the lounge is the place to do it, but no pressure, you may do as you please :-)

The gauge project sounds cool! Given that I2C is a short distance protocol, I assume that is just between components inside your dash, what are you going to use to get the data to display into it? Serial? CAN?

This thread might be better off in the general section just above this one. I could move it and change the ? into an ! if you like? :-)

Welcome along!

Fred.

[Delta]

Gidday,

If you want to post a thread about yourself, the lounge is the place to do it, but no pressure, you may do as you please

The gauge project sounds cool! Given that I2C is a short distance protocol, I assume that is just between components inside your dash, what are you going to use to get the data to display into it? Serial? CAN?

This thread might be better off in the general section just above this one. I could move it and change the ? into an ! if you like?

Welcome along!

Fred.

Sure, go ahead and move it

The gauges are planned to go into an old school car, so another of the arduinos or the MC332 I have floating around probably would have been the main controller and send everything via I2C locally, however as yet this aspect is completely open. I'm certainly open to ideas and discussion. If FreeEMS only has serial or can, then I assume a simple can -> serial ->(arduino) I2C or a small micro with both can and I2C onboard would be the go as the central controller. Perhaps it would even be a good idea to use TTL serial between the gauges?? Who knows, at this point I'll implement what ever works for me and make the design and software available. That way if its useful it can be adapted by the project.

Justin

[Fred]

Cool, I look forward to it :-)

The FreeEMS chip has I2C, SPI, CAN, and SCI/serial, but the first two are only good for short distance connections so one of the other two would be best. A CAN implementation is quite far down the list too, but there is nothing to stop someone else diving in and writing that code along side the other comms code once we have that setup and working as intended.

Fred.

[jharvey]

I've had a bit of an idea that I haven't presented because it might take folks off topic. Well I guess I'll do it anyhow. I'm sure you've heard of DLP for projectors. I don't see why one couldn't use a DLP chip with a laser pointer as your light source. Reflect the laser off the DLP and onto a white board, or similar. Then you can draw what ever display you want.

http://focus.ti.com/docs/toolsw/folders ... ipset.html

Probably best to keep focus one item at a time. But an interesting idea any how.

Oh yeah and welcome aboard.

[Delta]

I've had a bit of an idea that I haven't presented because it might take folks off topic. Well I guess I'll do it anyhow. I'm sure you've heard of DLP for projectors. I don't see why one couldn't use a DLP chip with a laser pointer as your light source. Reflect the laser off the DLP and onto a white board, or similar. Then you can draw what ever display you want.

http://focus.ti.com/docs/toolsw/folders ... ipset.html

Probably best to keep focus one item at a time. But an interesting idea any how.

Oh yeah and welcome aboard.

A very interesting idea, would make a reasonable system for a HUD - I'd like to see someone develop that.

Thanks for the welcome guys. I'm in the middle of writing my PhD thesis, so personal projects tend to be a little slow atm. I'll do my best to keep moving forward and keep everyone updated though.

[jharvey]

I took a look at your profile, where are you from? If you don't want that public, PM me. Just curious how global this is. I see Aussie, EU's and US's. If your in my backyard, I might come over and offer a beer.

I once demolished a laptop removing the back-light part of the LCD. With that removed, you can make a fairly easy HUD. I was looking into it because I have an eye problem, that makes night driving a bit harder then normal. My eyes are more sensitive then normal to the contrast in light. I was planing on taking this LCD and connecting it to a B/W camera, then inverting the image in software. This would allow for auto-dimming head lights, removing the contrast issue. So a bright white would turn into a black spot on the display.

Then I decided food in the mouth was better then playing electronics. I should think of pursuing that again some time. Lots of idea's, not much time. Bugger.

[Fred]

Oz, NZ, UK, Finland, Sweden, Canada, US, SA, PR, Mexico, and others :-) It would be safe to say that it's global ;-)

Interesting idea with the laser pointer!

Fred.

[Delta]

Proof of concept is running on the breadboard. 4 digits, 16 leds. Can set a high/low for the 16 leds and it scales from there to light the correct one. If below or above the limits it sets the correct limit led on, and also turns on the last decimal point on the 4 digit display. Currently its just on a loop with the input value being given to it by the loop. My alternative firmware, takes an input from a pot on an analog input, scales it, and displays it.

So thats the easy stuff done.

Next up is getting two arduinos to talk via I2C, and pass values from the main controller to the slave gauges via I2C or Serial.

Once I can get the controller to talk to one gauge, I then need to make sure it can talk to multiple and check that the update rate is fast enough etc.

Then onto working out how to "productionise" the design, ie take it off the breadboard - either custom pcb or if possible perhaps just protoboard.


When I can work out how to get movies off my mobile phone and onto the computer I'll post a vid of it just counting up revs

Pics to come also.

[Delta]

Proof of concept video, I apologise for how crap it looks - it was taken with a mobile phone rather than my video camera.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8EFZ_PM51A